Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Wine Season | Barreling

Barreling weekend has come and gone. Saturday AM Scott and I went with Stephen to pick up the juice for the wine. We do one barrel full of juice from the crushed grapes, and did two full juice barrels and add yeast.

Pick up was at M&M Wine Grape Co. Their grape inventory was huge!

First, setting up. We had to level the barrels and get the basement ready for the day.

Next, start siphoning the juice out of the barrels. We put it in buckets, carry them to the basement and strain the juice to keep out the grapes, seeds and stems. Lou had some little helpers!

Scott and Stephen took round one of pouring and straining. We all switched off, since you get pretty tired doing one task all day! Their arms needed a rest from lifting the buckets, and it's only fair for us all to do our share of lugging the buckets in. Note to selves: get another strainer! The strainers we have are fine mesh which is great, but we could have benefited from another one.

Clearly, this went on for a while.

Next: Pulling the grapes out of the barrels and putting them in the the press. You can get a nice buzz from the fumes in those buckets! Makes a not so glamorous job a bit better!

This is the messiest and longest part of the process. You can only fit so many grapes in the press, so its time consuming. Also, you don't want to lose a drop of wine - so you have to wait around for the final drops to be done before the day is over!

Now, we wait! The wine will sit in the barrel until March when we decant the barrels!